The late Dons
Stokes,
was a world famous
British medium who specialised in necromancy (communication with the
dead)
and was known affectionately to millions as 'housewives clairvoyant',
much
loved by audiences around the world during her forty-four year career.

As a child she
was
given medication to stop
her "seeing things", and it took some years and some personal traumas
before
she came to terms with her uncanny psychic powers. She reportedly had
flashes
of intuition and later developed a fascination for life after death
matters.

Attending a
seance by
spiritualist medium
Helen Duncan seems to have been the inspiration for Doris to take up
mediumship
herself. An unfortunate choice on which to model herself, as Mrs Duncan
was a fraud, her ectoplasmic spirit manifestations exposed as
cheesecloth,
surgical gauze and toilet paper. In 1944, she was prosecuted for
"conspiracy
to pretend that she was in touch with spirits", found guilty, and
sentenced
to nine months in gaol.

Undeterred,
Mrs Stokes
went on to demonstrate
her apparent powers to capacity audiences at some of the world's
largest
auditoriums including the Sydney Opera House.

She claimed to
be able
to pass on messages
from the dead, her first contact being her late father, and thereafter
speaking to people beyond the grave became common-place for her.
Audiences
were amazed as she consistently named some of their dead relatives. Mrs
Stokes also claimed to have assisted police in murder inquiries. In her
book Voicesin my Ear, she claims to have solved two
murder
cases in England, that of a small girl at Kirkham and another of
children
at Blackpool. While in Beverley Hills, Los Angeles, she claimed that a
local murder victim Weiss, contacted her, and described details of his
murder.

Described as a
simple,
delightful and kind
lady, she did much to console and comfort the bereaved, became a best
author
with Voices in my Ear, and gave most of her money from her
books
and public appearances to charities.

However, she
was
surrounded by controversy
as to whether she really could speak to the dead, and was once offered
£20,000 by British millionaire Mr Gerald Fleming to prove her
ability.
Despite the claims that she was a fake, she refused to take up
challenges
to demonstrate her powers under close surveillance. "They have been
trying
for years to prove that I am a fraud, but they failed because I am
not",
Mrs Stokes once said, and "the thousands of letters I have had from
grateful
people prove that I have brought comfort to many of the bereaved."

She was again
challenged during her Australian
tour in 1978 on the Don Lane TV show, by Canadian magician and skeptic
James Randi. There was a sensational outburst when Mr Randi called
Doris
Stokes a liar, and Don Lane stormed off the show. Don Lane said later,
that "although he did not know whether to believe in Doris' spiritual
powers
or not, he was not prepared to have her insulted as a person."

Michael
Edgley, the
entrepreneur who promoted
her tours in Australia was adamant however, saying, "I truly believe
she
has an amazing gift which many of us in this day and age are unable to
understand."

It was fairly
apparent
to sceptics however,
that Doris Stokes uses a technique known as "cold reading". She would
make
general statements about a particular person in the audience and at the
same time "fish" for information. Her forte, the seeming ability to be
able to pick out at random individuals to whom she would pass on
messages
from their dead loved ones. Leaning heavily on statistical
probabilities
she would tell an elderly woman that she was a widow, or that a husband
and wife had two children, and would cast her net wide making obvious
guesses
and leaving much open to wide interpretation. The messages would always
be of a trite and homely nature and appealed to those recently bereaved.

Typical of the
above
was Doris Stokes' performance
on North East England ITV's Tyne Tees programme, "Friday Live"on
December 21, 1979, in which she started with some anecdotal claims and
then began to "receive signals" from the departed.

She declared
that a
person seated in the
studio on her right, was named or associated with a dead person named
Taylor
(in the Newcastle telephone directory there are fifteen columns of
Taylors).
"This Taylor" she said, "was associated with someone named Elizabeth,
or
Liza, or Liz, or perhaps Edith, and had been dead about two years." A
viewer
telephoned in saying that it must be her husband who had been killed in
1943. Mrs Stokes assured the lady that her husband's death had been
sudden
and painless.

Analysed, we
have
someone not in the audience
replying, with no connection to any of the names mentioned by Mrs
Stokes,
and a death which occurred thirty-six, years before, not two; hardly
indicative
of an accurate conversation with the deceased. In the rambling
discussion
and demonstration which followed, she failed to score a single hit.

Much of Mrs
Stokes
success can be attributed
to "plants" in the audience, or to the fact that there are those in the
audience with whose background she is familiar. Ian Wilson exposed
Doris
Stokes as a fraud in his book, The After Death Experience, published
in 1987, in which he proves conclusively that she knew those in the
audience
she called out, or at least knew of them. They had contacted her and in
many cases, she had actually sent them tickets for seats in the front
rows
of her performances. These "plants" were entirely innocent believers,
participating
unwittingly in the fraud.

Neither can
any
credence be had in the claims
made in Mrs Stokes' book, Voices in My Ear, to have assisted
the
police in their investigations.

Detective
Chief
Superintendent William Brooks
of the Lancashire Constabulary, has stated that Ms Stokes made no
contribution
whatsoever to the detection of either murder. In America, the Los
Angeles
police said that all of what Stokes reported the murder victim Weiss
had
allegedly told her was readily available to the media at the time
Stokes
made details of the "psychic conversation" public.

The murder is
still
unsolved as the murder
victim neglected to inform Mrs Stokes of the names of his assailants or
provide an accurate description of them.

After Doris
Stokes
died, another clairvoyant,
Doris Collins stepped into her shoes, and her performances are managed
by the same agent Laurie O'Leary. When you are on to a good thing – stick
to it!